Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If our destination is to be the Father then the only path to get there is Jesus himself, his is the only name given under heaven by which we are to be saved (see Acts 4:12). Faced with this fact we tend to protest, desiring freedom to choose our own paths, to define our own truth, and to live our own lives. The taint of sin in our minds makes us believe that reality should then conform to what we have subjectively chosen and arbitrarily decided. We think that different paths and alternative truths that we prefer ought to be able to fulfill us precisely because we prefer and choose them. But when we rightly realize our destiny it is easier to understand why there can be only one path. Even if that path is narrow, or not what we ourselves would have chosen, that there should be a path at all to the Father should not be assumed as a given. Having lost access to his presence in the Garden of Eden we could not then erect a ladder or a tower to the infinite height of heaven where he dwells. Creatures with finite resources are utterly unable to cross the boundary between us and the Father by effort on our side. Only the one who himself came to us from the Father was able to stoop down and lift us up.
If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to him,
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
Do we desire to see the Father? Have we realized that to see him will truly be enough for us as well? Or are we, even though we may be Christians, content to seek a generic religious fulfillment or enlightenment? Do we prefer to believe that the path is broad and easy, and to imagine the whole world is taking, though many may not know it? Once we realize that only the one who made all things is also the only one who can give them meaning and fulfillment we can begin to surrender our insistence on self-definition. We begin to trade maps we ourselves have made from the middle of the terrain to maps given to us by the one with a bird's eye view.
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me, Philip?
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
Jesus is utterly unique because of who he is, defined by his relationship with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. Only his way of life shows us the way to the Father, only his teaching reveals the Father's mind, and the depths of the Father's love for us.
How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own.
The goals we create for ourselves, the solutions that merely human religion proposes are of such inferiority to what Jesus himself proposes for us as to be laughable. There is more for us than mere peace of heart or endless length of days that any religion might propose. Jesus himself desires to live and work through us just as the Father lives and works through him. He desires that our human nature participate in his own as he lifts it up and unites it to the Father himself. The lesser things with which we content ourselves are more easily understood and more readily intelligible, but, we should also realize, quick to lose their savor, insufficient to fulfill the deepest yearnings of our hearts. Only looking at Jesus himself do we even begin to realize what might finally give us this fulfillment. As we look, Jesus himself reveals the Father to us, and we become sons and daughters. As children, we realize that the home about which we have always dreamed but never experienced can be found only in the heart of Father, in the family life of the Trinity.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,
and will do greater ones than these,
because I am going to the Father.
When we begin living in accord with our deepest purpose the power of God is unleashed. He no longer has to hold back for fear that we would squander it selfishly. More and more of what we ask is asked in the name of Jesus, for the sake of his mission and goals, and more and more is therefore received. We become, as we grow, step by step, transparent to the presence of Jesus himself within us. One day we may even hope to say with Paul, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (see Galatians 2:20).
Because Jesus is the only way to the Father, and because being united to the Father is the only thing that will finally satisfy us, the truths handed down to us about Jesus himself are "of first importance":
that Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the Scriptures;
that he was buried;
that he was raised on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures;
Sin was an obstacle to union with the Father, and a gap we ourselves could not cross. Our end, on our own, no matter the path we chose was death. But Jesus took our sins and nailed them to a tree. He died in our place so that death itself would lose its sting. Jesus is risen, sin is conquered, and death itself has been rendered impotent. Creation is now being flooded with the grace of the third day, making it possible for everything that had once gone so wrong to be set aright. We too are meant to be witnesses of these things. We too are now called to make Jesus known so that he in turn can reveal the Father.
Day pours out the word to day;
and night to night imparts knowledge.
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